October 12, 2011

Sorry I've been gone a while. I've been having a crisis in faith, so to speak, and for various reasons I can't talk about it. Interestingly, while my problem is not law enforcement related, it does have to deal with my relationship with the system of law in a way which is similar in kind (though not in intensity) to the account related starting here. Although it is a VERY depressing account of systemic abuse by both the police and the prosecutor, I strongly reccommend that you read it if you have a strong enough stomach to deal with:

It is time to name names, as they say. The man who actually physically raped Sephora Davis at knife point on December 8, 2003 is named Eric Harder. He was, and perhaps is, a police informant. As far as I know he still lives in Mount Morris, New York. About six weeks later he and a then Mount Morris police officer named Dana Carson, who remains a police officer in Geneseo, New York, conspired to fabricate evidence and commit perjury to implicate Sephora in an armed robbery and “kidnapping” that took place in the hours after Harder had raped her. Other police officers were involved, though I can’t identify them specifically based on particular evidence. Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that the Livingston County District Attorney, Tom Moran, knew about and participated in this conspiracy from the beginning, perhaps even orchestrating it. In any case it is 100% certain that Moran at the very least became aware that the criminal charges against Sephora Davis were based on perjury and fabrication but continued prosecuting her anyway.

That post and the ones that follow, painstakingly track the evidence and the attorney's discovery of it. The description of his feelings while discovering it, mirror the feelings I've had in my own personal wranglings with my relationship to the law and the law's relationship to us.

It isn't pretty. But this is the kind of thing that we absolutely have to face. And deal with.

The theme in this work that I have the most trouble with is Fukuyama's definition of "private property". He starts off saying:

The earliest forms of private property were held not by individuals but by lineages or other kin groups, and much of their motivation was not simply economic but religious as well.

I had to stare at this, blinking, for a while, and read a bit further to realize that by "property" he means "real estate specifically". This is confusing to me, because I think of private property as private ownership of all kinds of things: land, but also (even in primitive societies) clothing, food, and tools of all sizes from spoons to boats. Since tools are certainly one of the "means of production" used in all societies, and since in all societies many tools are considered the personal, private property of particular individuals, the idea that there was a time before private property was baffling to me.

The Forest Has Eyes by Bev Doolittle. What externalities might feel like, in a clash of land ownership systems.

But as I read, I could see that Fukuyama uses "private property" and "private ownership of land" interchangeably, or at least sliding together in a fuzzy way. I have no idea if this is just him, or if it's a common conflation in political & economic philosophy in general. I invite informative lectures from those who know the field.

It seems to me that the problem with untrammeled private ownership of land is that land is chockablock with externalities. Almost by definition, privately-owned land is indissolubly connected to land owned by other people. If you sell your land, it automatically affects your neighbors; if you do things on or to your land, your neighbors are bound to feel spillover effects, it's as unstoppable as continental drift.

So I wonder if it's not so much, as Fukuyama argues, that private property leads to the development of the state, as that without a government or state to manage the externalities, private ownership of real estate is untenable. Basically, truly "private property (in land)" is a lie: the externalities *have* to be dealt with, it's just a question of whether it will be by a kin group or something larger, up to a full-fledged state.

The other thing I've been chewing over is how this looks from a biologist's POV. Biologists don't talk about "land ownership", we talk about "territoriality". "Territory" is clearly a far, far older principle than "property", and I'm trying to work out *how*, in my head.

Maybe it's that territory has to be defended, but ownership doesn't have that same stressed feeling. In societies that have nothing like a state or government, groups of people often leave a buffer zone or no-mans-land between them, so that the borders of each territory don't have to be patrolled all the time and defended against trespassers. Again, one of the functions of government, then, is to make land less "territorial", to reduce everyone's cost of defense -- so "private property" is more a consequence of government than a cause.

October 10, 2011

Here's a little note to put something to get the blog thru the week, Johns Hopkins reports that automatic faucets may be germier than old fashioned ones. It's a bit old (from March), but I thought we needed to put something up. I'd also remind you that, despite appearances, all the posts here, like the good old manual faucets, are not automatic.

October 07, 2011

When I was looking for this 1998 article about tax law and people renouncing US citizenship that I put in a comment, some other things came up. While the 1998 article focuses on the complex decisions that go into choosing to give up US citizenship, this March 2011 WSJ blog piece on the increasing numbers of expatriates seems to have sorted out all those messy details and figures out what is really happening.

“There is growing concern, particularly among the wealthy, about the future financial direction of the country,” said Paul L. Caron, Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. “This President constantly demonizes the wealthy, who undoubtedly are concerned about the tax policy that would emerge in 2012 if a re-elected Barack Obama, unconstrained by re-election concerns, finally confronts the budgetary train wreck that he has done so much to exacerbate.”

Stopping the quoted professor's website, he has this post and this post. The comments in the first, I think, point out that it is 1,500 in a nation of 300 million. It is heartening to know that my decision, if I choose to take it, will send a clear message and I hope that the powers that be realize that unless there is some real reform in the College Football's BCS, I'm outta here. Or there as the case may be. Discuss.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

It's almost as if the drafters of the Constitution considered this!

Our Constitution specifically defines "treason" and the only way someone can be convicted of it. As You Know, Bob (everyone), the U.S. Constitution is superior to U.S. laws, which can't violate the Constitution. So al-Awlaki and Khan can't have been put to death because they committed "treason."

The President has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

#2: It was justified to kill them because of their propaganda and speech.

Unfortunately for this argument, the Constitution also rules it out with the little-known, obscure, First Amendment freedom of speech.

Let's move on to more serious arguments.

But first let's jump to the White House presenting its official response as press secretary Jay Carney explains, and is questioned by Jake Tapper (!) of ABC News:

I think an open thread would be cool. Because I'm curious how everyone is. And the current stalwarts, apparently, forgot to change the passwords. (Incidentally, I'm reading the current posters every day -- good & thoughtful stuff, Dr. Science.)

As I write, there is a medical crisis at Antarctica's South Pole Station. Raytheon (the contractor that runs the Station) and the National Science Foundation (which is responsible for it) are refusing to authorize a medevac. Desperate relatives of the patient have created a website to publicize the situation, and are petitioning the White House to over-ride the contractor and agency's decision.

On August 27th Renee-Nicole Douceur, the winter site manager at the South Pole Station, suffered a stroke. The Pole doctors requested that she have an emergency medical evacuation as soon as possible: they have neither the kind of scanning equipment that could tell them what is going on in her brain, nor the kind of medication a true hospital would stock to treat a stroke patient.

The doctor noted on Sept. 3 that the healing is slower at the South Pole and that Renee would benefit from assessment and rehabilitation therapy as soon as possible. She also admitted that she didn’t know how to rehabilitate a stroke victim. Renee has partial vision loss to both eyes, and she also has brain fatigue.

Renee (with clipboard) at the ceremony placing the 2011 Geographic Pole marker. Because the ice cap glacier moves about 10 meters over the course of the year, the location of the geographic South Pole seems to move with respect to the Station and has to be re-positioned on the ice cap every year. The Ceremonial Pole is where people usually get their pictures taken, but has no scientific significance.

Raytheon and the NSF claim that there will be absolutely no opportunity for a medevac before the first regularly scheduled flight, toward the end of October. And besides, they say, the stroke is "not an emergency", not worth the considerable trouble and expense of a medevac from the Pole. Even if they could, which they claim they can't.

However, in April 2001 there was a medical evacuation from the Pole, during the polar night. The Sun has now been up for a week:

The Dark Sector Laboratory (DSL) a few days before sunrise, with the main station at the end of the flagline almost a mile away. Photo by J. Dana Hrubes.

Although a medevac earlier than the scheduled transport is almost certainly technically feasible, no flight has been pre-positioned -- so even if weather conditions temporarily improve, Raytheon would not be able to take advantage of it. They clearly do not intend to move Renee earlier than the regular transport, regardless of conditions.

The above is largely summarized from SaveRenee.org; the following are completely my own thoughts and research and not based on anything Renee, her family, or her friends have written, said, or implied.

Why is Raytheon being so hard-nosed about money that they're risking having an employee blinded or brain-damaged, with all the attendant risks of lawsuits, bad publicity, and bad feeling? I notice a few things:

1. This season already saw a medical airdrop at the Pole, in the cold and dark of late August. It was successful, but I assume it was quite expensive.

2. There was also a medevac from McMurdo on June 30, in the very middle of winter. McMurdo is probably an order of magnitude easier to get to than the Pole, but I'm sure this, too, was very expensive.

3. Raytheon's contract for running the Antarctic stations is up -- actually, that's the original 10-year contract plus a one-year extension. Insofar as I understand the process, Raytheon is not one of the finalists for the contract -- as of a year ago, only CH2MHILL, Lockheed Martin, and KBR were still in the running. The contract winner is being decided as I write, and should be announced in November of this year. They say.

So it looks to me a lot as though Raytheon doesn't give a damn about its future in Antarctica, or whether it will get bad publicity, much less any hypothetical human feeling for an employee -- the only consideration is that every extra penny it spends in Antarctica now will come out of its bottom line, instead of being rolled into next year's budget or otherwise cooked into the books. No wonder they're willing to act like a insurance company, playing the "Deny, Delay, Defend" game.

Spoolhenge is a unofficial, evolving installation at the South Pole made of industrial-size spools used to hold the miles of wire that connect the scientific sectors. Every year some (or maybe all, I don't know) of the spools are taken away as trash, but others accumulate and Polies build them into the henge. Photo by Anne Noble.